MadMike
Well-Known Member
Hey guys,
I know these aren't real props, but I really really liked the outcome of these (especially of the second one), and so I just wanted to share it with you.
As you can see from my profile, I'm from Germany (near Cologne), and here the carnival has a long and colorful tradition, so me and a group of people started six years ago to build a float and joined the Rosenmontagszug (a parade held on monday, for those of you who never heard of that).
Last year, our topic was "Romans", so I dressed up as some kind of centurio, and all I still needed was a helmet. I looked on ebay for replicas, but they were freaking expensive, regarding that I would wear it for only about 4 hours or something. I didn't like the helmets you could buy in costume shops either, as they just looked cheap. Two days before the parade, I got the idea: I took an old WWII-helmet, covered it with newspaper-pages (to protect it from getting dirty or something) and plastered these with plaster-bandage from the pharmacy. Then i trimmed it into form to look more like an imperial gallic and painted it with silver spraypaint. The crista was made out of foam, painted and hotglued to the helmet.
I know, it isn't accurate at all, but for something done within two hours, I don't think it is that bad.
This year, my group decided for the topic "Wine" (as our city has a vineyard recently), so I decided to costume as a wine bottle. I made a costume to give me the form of a bottle (it actually somehow looked like a long dress :lol), but I needed something on my head that looked like a bottleneck to give me the proportions of a real bottle.
So I took my helmet again and started with some layers of paper-maché. After 5 layers or so, I attached some kind of grid (the blue thing on the last picture) that is normally used for plastering walls. I formed a pipe out of it, put it on top of the helmet and put on more layers of paper-maché. To give it some more stability, I flilled it up with expanding foam, which also had the advantage that the top (after cutting and sanding the edges) looks like cork.
A little paint job, two holes for the strap, et voilá.
What do you think of it?
I know these aren't real props, but I really really liked the outcome of these (especially of the second one), and so I just wanted to share it with you.
As you can see from my profile, I'm from Germany (near Cologne), and here the carnival has a long and colorful tradition, so me and a group of people started six years ago to build a float and joined the Rosenmontagszug (a parade held on monday, for those of you who never heard of that).
Last year, our topic was "Romans", so I dressed up as some kind of centurio, and all I still needed was a helmet. I looked on ebay for replicas, but they were freaking expensive, regarding that I would wear it for only about 4 hours or something. I didn't like the helmets you could buy in costume shops either, as they just looked cheap. Two days before the parade, I got the idea: I took an old WWII-helmet, covered it with newspaper-pages (to protect it from getting dirty or something) and plastered these with plaster-bandage from the pharmacy. Then i trimmed it into form to look more like an imperial gallic and painted it with silver spraypaint. The crista was made out of foam, painted and hotglued to the helmet.
I know, it isn't accurate at all, but for something done within two hours, I don't think it is that bad.
This year, my group decided for the topic "Wine" (as our city has a vineyard recently), so I decided to costume as a wine bottle. I made a costume to give me the form of a bottle (it actually somehow looked like a long dress :lol), but I needed something on my head that looked like a bottleneck to give me the proportions of a real bottle.
So I took my helmet again and started with some layers of paper-maché. After 5 layers or so, I attached some kind of grid (the blue thing on the last picture) that is normally used for plastering walls. I formed a pipe out of it, put it on top of the helmet and put on more layers of paper-maché. To give it some more stability, I flilled it up with expanding foam, which also had the advantage that the top (after cutting and sanding the edges) looks like cork.
A little paint job, two holes for the strap, et voilá.
What do you think of it?
Last edited:
